Team,
Last Friday the US Court of Appeals for the sixth circuit dissolved the stay of the Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). As a reminder the ETS outlines rules for employers with more than 100 employees to adopt a policy that mandates all employees get vaccinated for COVID-19 but allows employers to include in their policy an option for unvaccinated employees to test weekly. OSHA will implement this standard and begin enforcement on January 10th (although they note they will not issue citations for testing until February 9th). Washington State has 30 days to adopt and or release their own version of this ETS which must be “as least as effective”. It is likely that this will continue to be contested, but with the dates so imminent we need to be prepared to implement our plan as required by the ETS.
We ask all employees, who have not already done so, to verify vaccination status with Human Resources by uploading one of the following documents to their Employee Uploads portal within Bamboo:
- The record of immunization from a health care provider or pharmacy;
- A copy of the COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card;
- A copy of medical records documenting the vaccination;
- A copy of immunization records from a public health, state, or tribal immunization
information system; or
- A copy of any other official documentation that contains the type of vaccine
administered, date(s) of administration, and the name of the health care professional(s)
or clinic site(s) administering the vaccine(s).
For those employees who do not have access to Bamboo, vaccine verification can be emailed to HR@Absherco.com or sent by picture in a text to Deana Parker at 253-625-6415. Employees can also give a copy to their immediate supervisor for submission to HR. As always, employees can also bring their verification to HR at the main office. Please share this information with our carpenter and laborer team members.
If you are not able or willing to verify your vaccination status Absher intends to include a testing option in our policy. We will have more information on this process as we better understand the requirements and our options.
Additionally a separate court has temporarily stayed the Federal Contractor vaccine mandate – which shows just how challenging it is to stay up to date on the status of these mandates.
Thanks for your continued patience and GRACE as we work through this process. We will continue to monitor and update you as more information comes available.
-Jeff Richards